170 EIGHTBALL
EIGHTBALL is a critically acclaimed comic book series written and drawn by Daniel
Clowes. Launched by Fantagraphics in 1989, the series quickly became a signature
title of the independent comics movement of the 1990s.
In certain respects, early issues of Eightball resembled Clowes’s fi rst solo comics
humor anthology, Lloyd Llewellyn (1985 – 89), which was also published by Fanta-
graphics. Th is is particularly true of the fi gure work and page compositions, which were
spare, angular, and a little awkward in places. Both anthologies off ered showcases for
Clowes’s unsparing wit and mordant humor. Unlike Lloyd Llewellyn, however, Eightball
was not built around a stable set of characters but instead embraced a wide range of sce-
narios and formats, from extended story arcs to biting one-page cartoons. While Lloyd
Llewellyn the character could be described as a hero, albeit a fl awed one, few if any of
the personalities on display in the early Eightball stories could be considered worthy of
emulation.
Over time, Clowes’s approach to creating comics became more ambitious, a develop-
ment that was refl ected in this eclectic comics anthology. In particular, his pages became
visually richer and at the same time more understated. By the end of the 1990s he had
matured into one of the most accomplished and multilayered graphic storytellers of his
generation. Despite its irregular publication and scathing approach to comics conventions,
as well as the comics subculture itself, Eightball has enjoyed a major infl uence on the look
and feel of modern cartooning. Virtually all of Clowes’s published work remains in print,
and his contemporaries routinely cite him as a central infl uence. Along with his contem-
poraries Chris Ware, Seth, Chester Brown, and the Hernandez Brothers, his best work
arguably sets a gold standard for a certain kind of panel-based narrative art.
Twenty-three issues of Eightball have appeared to date. Th e most recent, “Th e Death
Ray,” was published in June 2004. Although Clowes is reportedly working on a new
issue, the series appears to be on semi-permanent hiatus. Four collections of graphic
stories that originally appeared in the series have been published: Lout Rampage! (1991),
Orgy Bound (1996), Caricature (1998), and Twentieth Century Eightball (2002). Th ese
collections largely feature stories from the series earlier issues, when the humor could
be crude, scattershot, and occasionally nihilistic. Representative titles include “Hippy-
pants and Peace Bear,” “Why I Hate Christians,” and “I Hate You Deeply.” His fi ve-page
story “On Sports” (1994) memorably explores the “sexual undercurrent in sports:” “Th e
language of football, for example, makes this very clear. Th e object of the game is to
enter your opponent’s ‘end-zone’ as often as possible employing a variety of ‘backs’ and
‘ends’ (including those that are ‘split’ and ‘tight’) who attempt to ‘fi nd the hole’ so as to
‘penetrate’ as ‘deeply’ as possible into their opponent’s ‘territory.’” If anything, Clowes’s
discussion of baseball (“a stylized form of oedipal sexuality”) is even more vivid.
Even as Clowes sought to perfect the comedic short story, he experimented with long
story arcs that could be consolidated into full-length graphic novels. Th e fi rst and most
openly parodic of these titles is Pussey! (“ Torn from the pages of Eightball! ”), which tracks
the pointless journey of a witless superhero illustrator from “naïve fanboy” to “respected
professional” and fi nally “pathetic has-been.” Along the way, Dan Pussey encounters
